Group Blog November 2017

This book turned out to be one of the most popular that the group has read. Though everyone agreed that they had to take into account the book’s history and purpose as well as its literary merit (it was a propaganda novel written during World War II). The book had a good afterword which explained the background. Someone said that it was a book you had to read thinking about how it would have affected people reading it at the time.
As a piece of literature several people commented that it was very simple, naïve and almost wooden but all agreed that this was for several good reasons. It had to be short and simple so that more people would read it and it had to be rather lacking in detail so that people in different countries could identify with it.
One man commented that it isn’t often that you read a book that people might have been prepared to die for.

As always, we voted on the book (out of 10). The average was 7.4, one of our highest.

M.H. ‘Really enjoyable although slow starting. Good writing style. Liked both the big brother story and the love story’

C. H. ‘Loved it, dystopian at its best. Caught my attention from the start, and it lived up to my expectations. Definitely got me thinking, and allowed us to apply the ideas to today. Controversial ending, gave plenty of chatter’.